


In for Repairs

by igrockspock



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Competence Kink, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Miscommunication, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-25 12:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22356532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: Rey is determined to make a grand gesture to declare her feelings for Rose, but Rose doesn't pick up on the message.
Relationships: Rey/Rose Tico
Comments: 17
Kudos: 87
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	In for Repairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syrupwit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syrupwit/gifts).



Ben’s lightsaber isn’t red anymore, thanks to Rey’s endless hours of meditation. It is still overlong and jittery and ridiculous, not the kind of weapon she’d trust in a fight. No amount of meditation can fix that because it’s a mechanical problem, not a spiritual one. The inside of the lightsaber looks just like the jumble of mismatched circuits and jury-rigged repairs on the _Falcon_ \-- except worse, because lightsabers are much more delicate and fickle that spaceships. For once in her life, Rey isn’t sure where to even _start_ fixing it. 

“Can I help?” 

Rey’s head snaps up.

“If you’re here to tell me I should just build a new one…” she trails off, feeling guilty as soon as she sees Rose’s silhouette in the door.

“Would I ever tell you to throw out almost-perfectly-good tech?” Rose asks, sliding onto the bench beside her. “Look, I took a peek inside it yesterday. I know I should’ve asked first, but…” She bites her lip. “Are you mad?”

Rey is possibly overly territorial about her possessions and personal space. It’s the sort of thing that happens if you grow up on a scavenger world where everyone steals everything that isn’t nailed down. If someone else had touched the lightsaber, Rey probably would be mad, but Rose is different. She shares, always, even when she’s got nothing. After Crait, they’d been on the run for months, and everytime Rey wandered into the galley, Rose gave her half of whatever she’d been eating. 

“You’re hard to be mad at,” Rey says quickly. The thought of Rose going through her things doesn’t disturb her at all, and she can’t say that about anyone else in the whole galaxy.

Rose beams. “Good! Because I noticed there’s a variable resistor in there instead of a semiconductor, which is obviously --”

“Not energy efficient,” Rey breaks in, unable to resist finishing the sentence.

“Right, so it can’t --” 

“Siphon off the excess heat!” 

“Which is what makes the blade all jumpy and erratic,” Rose says. “Has anyone ever told you you’re _terrible_ about interrupting people when you’re excited?”

“No, but I didn’t talk to anyone on Jakku,” Rey says. “And there was no one besides Master Luke on Ach-To.”

“So you’re unsocialized.” Rose rolls her eyes, but she looks more exasperated than actually mad. “Anyway, I brought you a semiconductor. It’s actually the dimmer from R2’s holo projector, but he said he barely uses it. It’s great, because it takes up less space --”

“So I can adjust the other wiring,” Rey finishes. 

“Clearly you haven’t learned your lesson about interrupting,” Rose grumps.

Rey tries to look sorry, but she can’t help but beam when she takes the semiconductor out of Rose’s outstretched hand. It’s just a thin black disk, so much better than the bulky gray box that took up half the space inside the lightsaber’s housing. Rose hands her exactly the right screwdriver before she can even ask. Five minutes later, Rey ignites the saber, and the two of them are bathed in a steady amber glow.

“You’re brilliant,” Rey breathes.

“I’m okay.” Rose turns red and looks away. Rey and Finn and Poe have all been nagging her about accepting compliments, but the lesson hasn’t sunk in yet. “Do you want a cookie?” she asks. She breaks apart the one inside her cargo pocket and hands it to Rey without waiting for an answer.

“You should help me repair the _Falcon,_ ” Rey says. The words tumble out too fast, and she’s not sure that Rose understood, so she adds, “I’m redoing all the relays.”

Which is obviously the best part of spacecraft repair, and hopefully Rose gets that Rey had saved the job just for her.

“ _All_ of them?” Rose’s brow furrows. “That’s going to cost a fortune!”

Rey nods, trying not to show her disappointment that Rose took the wrong tack. “I did a job for Zorii Bliss.”

Smuggling probably isn’t a proper job for a guardian of the light, but as near as Rey can tell, Jedi Knight isn’t a paying position. 

“You know every repair job costs twenty percent more and takes ten percent longer than you think, right?” Rose continues, still looking worried.

Their knees bump underneath the bench, and Rey nods. “That’s why I need you.”

Rose flushes, getting it at last. “Okay. Name the time and I’ll be there.”

Rey beams. “It’s a date!”

***

“Spacecraft repair is not a date,” Poe says.

Rey rolls her eyes. “And what’s _your_ idea of a date? Smoldering at someone and taking them to bed?”

Poe holds up his hands. “I’m not getting any complaints.” His eyes go wide. “Wait, did somebody complain?”

Rey smacks him out of her way with a hydrospanner. Lightly, of course. Things had been tense between them at first, before she’d understood that half of what he said wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. It wasn’t a con, just a joke.

Poe stands in the doorway of the workshop, blocking her exit. “Look, I get it. Fixing up a spaceship is your idea of a dream date. That doesn’t mean it’s Rose’s.”

Rey hesitates, always a fatal mistake where Poe is concerned. A gap of a second is enough for him to start talking.

“She’s a mechanic. That’s all she does, all day, every day. If you wanna let her know she’s special, you’re gonna have to be more obvious.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Rey says, which is as close as she ever comes to admitting that Poe has a point. Of course, she’s not sure _how_ she’ll make Rose feel special, considering that she’d spent all her credits on the relays. She’d splurged and gotten them from the _nice_ section of the junkyard.

“Hey!” Poe calls when she sidesteps him and slips around the door. “If all else fails, just try being honest!”

Rey shakes her head. How could _words_ be enough for Rose?

***

Poe had a point: repairing a ship posed certain logistical challenges for a date. For one, it’s impossible to talk while wearing a welding mask, and touching anyone who’s holding hot welding equipment is just dangerous. Rey had done her best to make it special; she’d set aside the least wonky soldering iron just for Rose, and she’d bargained the last of her spare memory cubes to get extra desserts from the mess hall. Still, the effort leaves something to be desired.

When Rose pushes up her welding mask, her face is pink and streaked with sweat. Another miscalculation: Rey had thought up here on top of the _Falcon_ , they’d get a nice evening breeze through the open hangar bay doors, but the damp jungle air is thick and motionless.

“Here,” Rey says hastily, pushing a thermos toward Rose. She’d made plenty of extra ice in the _Falcon’s_ galley.

“Tastes like home,” Rose says, and Rey’s lip curl upward in a smile. She knows Rose is from an ice planet. She’d made certain to have cool water on hand.

“Have as much as you like! There’s more where it came from,” she says, then winces. What a perfectly idiotic thing to say. The base is in a rainforest; unlimited water is not an act of love in a place where water literally falls out of the sky every day.

Rose, predictably, fails to understand the significance of the gift. 

“No evening flights tonight,” she muses, looking out over the silent hangar bay.

She’s right, Rey realizes, and her stomach flips. In the first months following the Battle of Exogol, the hangar bay had buzzed with activity as Resistance fighters fanned out across the galaxy, mopping up the generals who thought they could revive the Order. Now almost all the holdouts have been defeated, and the base grows a little quieter every day. Rey wonders how long it will be before nobody’s left.

Before _Rose_ leaves. She could go home, or enlist in the Navy, or find work as a mechanic on hundreds of different worlds. And Rey would have lost her chance.

“Hey,” Rose says softly, settling beside her on the edge of the _Falcon_. “You got really sad all the sudden.”

Rey swallows hard. “This is all ending, isn’t it?” 

Rose scoots over so their knees are touching. “Yeah. And I feel stupid for being sad. I mean, we _won_. But I lived my whole life for the Resistance, and I don’t know what’s next. My aunties are all asking when I’m going to come home.”

A lump of ice settles in Rey’s stomach. Rose _is_ leaving. She has a home and a family. It’s only a matter of time. And Rey has nothing to give her. Her gift of water was meaningless, and now all she has are words -- the most untrustworthy gift in the galaxy. The absolute cheapest thing anyone has to give, the thing they offer up when they’re trying to get your guard down, the so-called gift they give when they don’t want to surrender anything that truly matters.

She still has to try.

“I’m terrible at this,” she blurts. As an opening, it could use some work.

Rose huffs. “Of course not!” she exclaims, gesturing toward the orderly row of color-coded relays stretching out behind the maintenance hatch.

“Not at that.” Rey narrowly manages not to roll her eyes. She is _obviously_ a very gifted mechanic. “At --”

The words get stuck, and she has to try again.

“At dating,” she finally manages, but she can’t actually look at Rose. 

Rose gives a soft little gasp, like somebody’d hit her and she didn’t see it coming. “You’re dating someone?” She scoots away a little, nodding to herself. “I mean, of course you’re dating someone. You’re pretty and talented, and a Jedi. Who wouldn’t want that?”

Rey’s skin feels too cold now that Rose isn’t sitting beside her. She doesn’t really understand where this conversation is going. “I’m not dating anyone. I mean, I’m trying, but --”

“Is it Finn?” Rose breaks in. “Because he’s _so_ oblivious. I could talk to him. If you want. That’s what friends are for, right?”

“You want to help me date Finn?” Rey asks. This just keeps getting worse.

“Only if you want me to.” 

Now Rose isn’t even looking at her. What an absolute and utter disaster. She should just jump off the _Falcon_ right now and run off into the jungle.

But if she woke up tomorrow and Rose was gone, on her way back to her home and all her family…

Rey swallows hard. “I don’t want you to help me date Finn. I want to date _you_. Only I’m terrible at it. Because welding relays isn’t a date. You can’t talk while you’re welding. And the present I got you was water, but we’re in a rainforest, and --”

She stops suddenly when Rose’s hand curls around hers.

“ _Me_? You want to date _me_?”

“Yes,” Rey says firmly. “Absolutely. You’re so kind. And you always give me the right tools before I can even ask for them. Gods, I’m awful at this.”

Rose’s hand tightens around her fingers. She’s tracing her thumb over the inside of Rey’s palm now, sending shivers down Rey’s spine. “No,” she breathes. “You’re so good at this. You trusted me with your most precious possession. And you gave me the best soldering iron. Yours only worked if you held it at exactly a forty-five degree angle, and it still overheated every five minutes.”

“You noticed?” Rey asks, her heart lifting just a little.

Rose smacks her, but she’s grinning. “Of course I noticed.”

Rey’s heart is beating too fast. “What do we do now?” she asks.

“You kiss me.” 

Rose is close now, so close Rey can see the pulse jumping in her throat. She thinks she ought to make some kind of disclaimer -- that she’s actually only done this once before, that she’s probably even worse at this than she is at dating -- but she doesn’t want to think just now, so she just closes her eyes and leans in.

Maybe if she’d kept them open a fraction of a second longer, their noses wouldn’t have bumped. The whole thing is probably too wet, and her lips are probably too chapped, but maybe she’s not awful, because Rose’s hands are twining in her hair. Before she knows it, she’s leaning back against the _Falcon_ with Rose’s warm and comforting weight on top of her. 

Perhaps she’s not so terrible at dating after all.


End file.
